The past makes us who were are today...

Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone!  If you are alone today, it can be a rough day, right?  Well, don’t let it be. It’s pretty much a manufactured holiday created by Hallmark to sell cards these days, anyway.  When did we get so ridiculous with holidays?  It seems we slide from one holiday to the next almost seamlessly now.  I’ve already seen Easter stuff out, for Heaven’s sake!

I’m lucky to have an amazing man in my life.  It took me a lot of false starts to find him, though, and I had to quit looking before he found me. Seriously, I had pretty much sworn off ever dating again when I met Rob.

I got married the first time when I was just 19 years old. I think I was escaping my parents with that one, now that I look back with wisdom.  Joe, I’m sorry you got caught up in that and I hope your life turned out well.  He was (or is) a Merchant Marine Engineer. We thought it would be a perfect marriage because he had to be at sea 6 months out of the year. We thought we’d never get tired of each other and it would be nothing but romance every time his ship docked. I set up our little nest in a lovely apartment in downtown Baltimore and played the dutiful wife while he was away, looking forward to his return each time.  But, something happened to him out there at sea, alone with his thoughts. He started imagining I was doing all sorts of things back here on dry land (which I was not, I am super faithful, even when dating).  My problem was that every 6 months a stranger would come home and expect to pick up where we left off.  It was a disaster.  The last time he came home from sea, he told me was arriving on a certain day and came home early and was trying to spy on me to see if he could catch me cheating, which I wasn’t.  I fled to California and never looked back. Out of the two years we were married, we actually only spent 8 days together because of his job.

My second husband I met when I was rebounding once again from the relationship with my perennial boyfriend from high school, Cliff . Cliff and I, thank goodness, never tied the knot, but lived together off and on for years. He was a serial cheater and I’m so glad I finally broke that cycle! Last I spoke with him a few years back, he is still not married but told me he was gonna make an honest woman of his girlfriend “someday”, geez… Poor guy never grew up. He’s still hanging out with college kids in his 50’s.  When we broke up for the final time, I gave him the book “The Peter Pan Syndrome” , evidently he didn’t read it.

Anyway, husband two was Bill, a really sweet guy from Carroll County who worked with Cliff at Amtrak.  Cliff was a rail sweeper at the time and Bill was a Block Operator. His job was to sit in a little hut out on the line and switch the rails to keep trains from crashing into each other. It was a very stressful but high paying job.  We bought a really cute little house in Baltimore and once again I set about being the perfect wife.  Sometime not long after our marriage, Bill started hanging out with a bunch of engineers, you know, the guys who drive the trains?  Well, let me tell you, after meeting those guys, I’ll never feel safe on a train. They turned my sweet little country boy into a raging druggie and alcoholic!  He got caught up in partying with them after work and one day came home after smoking PCP with them and threw my tv and my cat out our second story window.  I left that night and never went back. We were married about 2 ½ years.

Husband number three was the worst, though. This time, I thought I was being smart and decided to live with Brian before marrying him.  We met when we were both working at the Valley Inn in Greenspring Valley in Baltimore. He was a rock musician and bartended there to supplement his income. I was working as an Emergency Vet Tech then, waiting tables on the side.  Brian was one of those deep, philosophical, brooding musicians. He was Native American, Northern Arapahoe, with long dark hair, always dressed in leather and feathers when not bartending.  So, we lived together for 5 years before I finally said I’d marry him.  The day after we got married, his personality changed. By that time, I had started on my nursing career and was working at Springfield State Mental Hospital.  He would fly into rages, accusing me of dressing nice because I was seeing someone at work.  Can you imagine? Yeah, I’m dating one of the loonies,  Brian.  He ripped up my address book and told me I would not be hanging out with my girlfriends anymore. He got crazy possessive! I guess some guys think that marriage certificate means they own you.  The final straw came one night when I was getting ready for work and he tried to strangle me in his rage. I went to work that night with his finger marks on my neck and the other nurses, with little convincing, got me to go to my mom’s and stay there.  A few weeks later, Brian sent a suicide note to my Mom’s dog, for gosh sake!  Yes, I had great taste in men. Not!

After that crap, I decided I better just work on my career and forget men. I was having just a grand old time hanging out with my girlfriends, anyway.  One night, actually it was Sept 15, 1990, Rosh Hashanah,  at my house (Jewish New Year), I was trying to get away from the family dinner as early as possible and had set up plans to go to Fell’s Point with my girlfriends for a little pub crawling.  I had to stop at Tully’s in Westminster first, though, as a friend was having a birthday.  I walked into Tully’s and ordered a drink and they were having a thing where you flipped a coin and if you called it right, you won a drink.  I won a drink but was not staying so I turned to this guy next to me, who was in a three piece suit, and said “here, have a drink on me” and I left to go back to the house to get ready to go to Fell’s Point. Well, girlfriend Pam called while I was changing and said it was raining cats and dogs down at the Point and we should just meet at Tully’s.  So, back I went…  The guy I had given the drink chip to was still there and looks at me with one of those “hey, baby” looks, you know the one and says “I guess I owe you a drink now”.  Well, it was Rob, who had just come from teaching a computer class at the local community college.  I was not impressed because at the time, he was not my “type.” Back then, I went for long haired, rebellious types and here was a staid, lawyerly looking type trying to pick me up. But, something made me sit down and start talking with Rob.  I have never gotten up from that proverbial chair…. He’s intelligent and makes me think, and we can talk for hours and hours, even 22 years later and never be bored with each other.

Rob has been my rock now for 22 years. He has stood by me through a lot of scary things. Sure, we’ve had our spats but we’ve never gone to bed angry and we truly respect each other.  We are as different as night and day. I’m spontaneous and goofy while Rob is practical and a planner. I don’t know how it works, but it does.  Opposites do indeed attract.

So, I see you counting up my marriages….Yes, Rob is my fourth. I am his third.  Sometimes it takes a few goofs to get to the goodness in life. At least I had the brains to get out of bad situations, right?

Take heart if you aren’t in a relationship right now, it just hasn’t found you yet.  Stop looking and just be yourself and when you least expect, your world will turn upside down, trust me. In the meantime, know that you are worthy of great love!

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it” ~Jalal Rumi